


Phone Thief

by WithThisShield



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amputee Bucky Barnes, Awkward Boners, But also, Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, Dick Pics, Kid Fic, M/M, Masturbation, Oops, Phone Sex, Porn with Feelings, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Sexting, Smut, War Veteran Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:40:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29666016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WithThisShield/pseuds/WithThisShield
Summary: Steve Rogers has a problem. Fighting really gets his blood flowing, and now that he’s out of the trenches and getting adequate nutrition and sleep in between every mission, the awkward post-fight boners are not going away.Bucky Barnes may have left an arm in Afghanistan, but his dick works just fine, thank you very much. So when he discovers that his new VA counselor has a hot mystery friend with a problematic libido, Bucky thinks he might have one last mission in him after all.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 44
Kudos: 328





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am so NOT supposed to be writing fan fic right now, but this just sort of fell out into my computer. I am blameless, I swear.

Bucky tossed himself down into the spare chair in his new VA counselor’s office and tried to be good, really he did. Sam was refilling their coffees, and Bucky had approximately ninety seconds until he returned. It wasn’t his fault that Sam had left his cell phone lying unattended on his desk. It wasn’t his fault that the phone chirped intriguingly with an incoming message. It wasn’t even _really_ his fault that he already knew Sam’s passcode, because apparently flyboys were shit at infosec and Sam had a habit of just unlocking his phone where anyone (Bucky) could see.

So who could blame him for swiping Sam’s phone to investigate who Flyboy was texting with in the middle of the workday? No one, really—Bucky was blameless here.

The message was a photo—taken in a locker room from the background—showing a man’s body from about mid-chest down. Bucky could tell even through the khakis and blue button-up that this dude was tall and ripped, and he was also sporting a very noticeable erection. Bucky’s mouth went dry.

The image caption read: _This is seriously becoming a problem. What do I do?_

Oh, Bucky had some thoughts about that. So many thoughts. His thumb was flying over the screen without even bothering to second-guess the wisdom of answering.

 **Sam:** Suggestions. 1) get your khakis tailored to have a third pant leg because DAMN BOY

 **Sam:** 2) tell me where you are so i can get on my knees for sunday prayer

 **Sam:** by which i mean sucking your soul out thru your cock

Bucky watched the ellipsis blink as Mystery Hot Dude tried to figure out how to respond to that. The pause seemed laden with agonized uncertainty, and after a few seconds, Bucky decided to put this “Steve” out of his confused misery.

 **Sam:** why are you sending a dick pic to sam anyway, he’s a skirt chaser he’s not gonna help you out man

Bucky heard Sam’s footsteps approaching from behind, so he silenced the phone and quickly hid it between his thighs. Sam set a full coffee mug on the front edge of his desk for Bucky and then skirted around to sit in the desk chair. There was something oddly humanizing about the random collection of thrift store mugs they had at this VA, instead of those tiny fuckin’ wax paper cups most places put out to hold their burnt coffee. Bucky reached for the mug and sipped—the coffee tasted like it should be used to clean engines, but at least it wasn’t weak dishwater shit.

“Look, man,” Sam was saying, “you know I’m thrilled you’re sticking with group, but you might get more out of it if you actually, y’know, talked.”

Bucky shrugged uncomfortably. “Still gettin’ the lay of the land.” He’d been in DC almost two months now, he knew the names of all the regulars in Sam’s Tuesday lunchtime group meeting, and that excuse was gonna wear thin any minute. He knew it, Sam knew it, and if there was a God, then God knew it too.

Bucky set down his coffee and checked the phone. Three new messages.

 **Steve:** Who is this?

 **Steve:** Did you steal Sam’s phone?

 **Steve:** I don’t know who you are but you need to return Sam’s property to him.

Holding the phone out of Sam’s line of sight, he quickly thumb-typed a response.

 **Sam:** relax Mystery Hot Dude i'll give it back

“How’s things with your sister?” Sam asked, trying a different angle of attack.

“Asshole hasn’t tried to violate the restraining order since I moved in, so there’s that.” Becca’s ex-husband was a stand-up guy when he was sober. Unfortunately, he _wasn’t_ sober nearly as often as she’d been led to believe.

Sam nodded consideringly. “Living with family is great, I’m all for leaning into your support structure, you know I like to beat that drum. But Barnes… I’m kinda concerned you positioned yourself in an environment that’s gonna encourage hypervigilance.”

Jesus Christ did Bucky really not want to discuss this. “If I’m gonna be doing perimeter checks at three in the fuckin’ morning, it might as well be for an actual reason.”

“I don’t got no quick fixes to make you reintegrate into civvie life, but—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bucky interrupted, “the first step is wanting to do the work.” He ignored Sam’s totally unimpressed raised eyebrows and surreptitiously checked the phone again.

 **Steve:** You think I’m hot?

 **Sam:** they didn’t amputate my dick

Bucky suppressed a grin. There was something adorably naïve about Hot Friend Steve’s question, as if he’d taken the photo with dismay, and honestly hadn’t noticed how smoking hot it was. He tucked his hand, phone included, into the pocket of his navy blue peacoat and stood.

“Well this was fun, but I gotta jet.”

“A’right, Barnes,” Sam said with that patented tone of resigned patience.

“See ya next week, Flyboy,” Bucky called as he left the office.

In the now-empty meeting hall, he took out Sam’s phone again, and because he didn’t really see the point in impulse control anymore, Bucky forwarded Hot Steve’s pic and number to himself. Then he deleted the evidence of their exchange and left Sam’s phone on the refreshments table next to the coffee carafe. Sam would find it later and assume he’d forgotten it there himself. Bucky felt an odd little warmth of satisfaction in his chest at a successful stealth operation. You can take the sniper out of Special Forces, but you can’t take the Special Forces out of the sniper.

.o.O.o.

Steve flopped down on the bench in the empty locker room, elbows on knees and head hanging from his shoulders as he tried to breathe through the inconvenient and frankly unwanted burn of arousal. The situation wasn’t getting better as his body stabilized in the twenty-first century; if anything, it was getting worse with each successive mission. For the first time, he mentally cursed Erskine.

Steve grew up during the Depression—he was used to ignoring hunger until it went away on its own—so after the serum, he would eat his assigned rations and not think anything about how he never felt full. It was war, everyone complained about the size of the rations, he’d sooner expect to have a day when the sun didn’t rise than a day without hunger. It was the reality he’d always inhabited.

So it had come as a bit of a shock when the SHIELD medical team flipped out at him over the test results in those first couple weeks. Turned out that he had close to zero-percent body fat because he’d been living on the razor’s edge of starvation for the whole two years since his transformation, and if he wanted to actually be healthy, he should be packing away at least four thousand calories a day.

Steve’s head snapped up at the sound of the locker room door opening, but it was just Shoshanna, the level-one junior agent assigned to “assist” (read: babysit) him. She gave him a wry half-smile and handed him the required post-mission medicated protein shake.

He sighed. It wasn’t even that the shake would taste that bad—Shoshanna was a smoothie wizard, and anything that made his stomach stop eating itself would feel welcome after physical exertion.

“Cap,” Shoshanna said in a surprisingly accurate tone of Disappointed Jewish Mother, despite that she was all of twenty-three years old and currently chastising a national icon.

Steve sighed again and started inhaling the shake. It was chocolate-strawberry flavored and only slightly chalky in texture, and kind of delicious actually, and he loathed it.

Shoshanna sat beside him on the bench. “I know this is embarrassing, and you probably feel like your body is betraying you, but it’s a _good thing_ that you’re finally getting adequate nutrition and sleep, and we’ll figure out how to manage the side effects.”

“Thanks, Shosh.” He did feel a little better just from having her here. Shoshanna had informed him early on that she was “very gay,” and the utter lack of appreciative glances from her was like a balm.

“Take your time. I’m gonna go run interference with Agent Sitwell.” She’d been covering for him ever since he started needing extra time to get his body under control before the post-mission debriefings.

“You’re a peach,” Steve acknowledged gratefully.

“True.” She gave a solemn nod. “I _am_ a peach.”

.o.O.o.

Steve slouched insolently in his conference room rolly chair, too fed up with the universe at large to feign interest in the debriefing. Shooting Nazis had never required this much red tape. He should sit next to Clint and start playing Debriefing Bingo under the table. His middle square would be “yelled at for jumping off/out of something that would make a regular person go splat” and Clint’s would be “ended up in Medical again.”

Steve’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and he slipped it out as stealthily as he could, assuming it was probably Sam trying to get in touch about the klepto patient incident. Across the table, Natasha definitely clocked him checking his phone, but he didn’t think she’d tattle.

It wasn’t Sam.

 **Unknown Number:** hey this is the phone thief

 **Unknown Number:** i forwarded your pic to myself so i can stare at you while im jerking off, just fyi

His recent spy training was the only saving grace that kept him from sucking in a shocked breath. It really shouldn’t make him hot that some random patient of Sam’s stole his photo and added it to his spank bank (as Tony would call it). It would be so wrong to be turned on by that. And yet, _and yet_.

For pity’s sake, he’d _just_ managed to get himself presentable, and now all he could think about was some smart-mouthed vet stroking off just because Steve got all hot under the collar after every fight nowadays. He should definitely block this number.

He saved it to his contacts under “Phone Thief.”

 **Steve:** okay good to know

 **Steve:** now I’m hard under the table at a work meeting so thanks for that

 **Phone Thief:** bullshit

 **Phone Thief:** pic or it didnt happen

Steve chewed the inside of his cheek hesitantly for all of 2.5 seconds before he slouched a little lower in his chair, canted his hips up a bit to make the situation more obvious, and snapped a photo of the underside of the conference table. The image came out grainy from the low light conditions, but the telltale bulge was still evident. It was possible Steve was losing his mind, because he then intentionally sent the photo of his under-the-table hard-on to a complete stranger.

 **Phone Thief:** OH SHIT you were not joking, bro you gotta get that trouser snake under control

 **Steve:** I’m sort of on meds that make it difficult to do that.

He hoped it wasn’t stretching the truth too much to refer to super-soldier serum injection as “being on meds,” but it was the best explanation he could think of that wouldn’t… wait. Hold on. He hadn’t told _anyone_ about this beyond Shosh, Sam, and the one SHIELD doctor he’d deemed least skeevy based on a variety of metrics such as the number of times they asked study his endurance limits and how much they salivate when he lets them draw blood samples. It was probably weird to be divulging this extremely personal information to Phone Thief after exchanging only a dozen texts.

 **Phone Thief:** ok

 **Phone Thief:** how about this

 **Phone Thief:** you go finish your afternoon of responsible adulting, and when you get home tonight, if you want you can text me for a reward

 **Steve:** sounds like a plan

He tucked his phone away again. Natasha was studiously not looking at him in a way that meant she probably knew exactly what he’d been doing. Clint was folding a post-it note into the world’s tiniest paper airplane. Standing at the display screen at the head of the table, Sitwell was belaboring a point about how it wouldn’t be good for Captain America’s public image if someone else had gotten ahold of this security footage of Steve drop-kicking a bad guy.

“I’ll try to drop-kick the gun runners more politely next time,” Steve answered, deadpan.

He didn’t forget about Phone Thief, but the promise of more to come later settled the restlessness under his skin. The sex drive didn’t exactly go away, but he found it easier to temporarily set it aside. He knew he would take care of it later. He would _be taken care of_ later, by Phone Thief. Steve worried it was pathetic to be deriving this much comfort from a barely-existent connection with a total stranger… but he wasn’t worried enough to stop.

.o.O.o.

Bucky scrubbed his damp palm over his jeans and took a moment to strategize. He had an hour until he needed to leave to pick up his nephew from pre-school, which would be plenty of time to accomplish some pornographic photography for someone with _two hands_ , but his selfie game was significantly hindered. First, he figured out how to use the time delay feature in the camera app and jerry-rigged a phone stand. Next, lighting: the basement-level bedroom in his sister’s townhouse did have a window, though it was high up on the wall, so he turned on a lamp to supplement it.

Bucky’s hand was shaking as he pulled his shirt off. He used to be able to walk into a club, flash a cocky smile, and get beautiful people to invite him home for the night. Now strangers looked at his pinned sleeve before they looked at his lips, and feeling someone stare from across the bar made his skin crawl instead of lighting him up with anticipation.

He stepped out of his jeans and boxers and sat on the edge of his bed. Maybe this would be good. He could control exactly how the viewer saw him. He could make himself attractive again, instead of his body being a thing that made people uncomfortable and guilty at the obvious cost of his service. He could pretend Hot Steve with the medicated libido would be more interested in kneeling on the floor and exploring his cock with his mouth.

Bucky took himself in hand and started taking pictures.

.o.O.o.

Steve was practically vibrating with anticipation by the time he got home that evening, but he made himself prepare and eat dinner without touching his phone. He knew he could be a bit intensely overeager about, well, everything, and he felt weirdly nervous at the prospect of scaring off Phone Thief. (Despite that nothing about their interactions so far suggested he was in any way skittish.) Around 8:30pm, Steve finally gave in to temptation and took his phone into his bedroom.

 **Steve:** Is it tonight yet?

The answer was a photo: a man’s bare, tanned torso, light and shadow playing across washboard abs, dog tags hanging in the hollow of his sternum between well-built pecs. Steve sucked air through his teeth. Jesus Christ, those _dog tags_. How had he served two years in the army without realizing he had a thing for men wearing nothing but their tags?

Then a second photo arrived, framed wider this time. The line of his throat was visible, and Steve wanted to lick that adam’s apple. A muscular right arm curved down, a square hand resting in the vee of Phone Thief’s hip, fingers trailing into dark hair as if reaching suggestively for a prize that was just out of sight. (The left arm was still carefully cropped out of view, and while Steve could guess at why, it was hardly his main focus at the moment.)

 **Phone Thief:** this is your chance to stop

 **Phone Thief:** if youve got any delicate sensibilities im about to offend them

Steve felt like all the oxygen had been sucked from the room. His heart was hammering against his ribs like he’d just sprinted thirty miles.

 **Steve:** What makes you think I want to stop?

 **Phone Thief:** aright hold on to your khakis

The next photo revealed his cock, thick and fully hard, Phone Thief’s fingers loosely framing the base like a promise of what would happen next. Steve groaned. A minute passed, as if the sender was building anticipation, and then Phone Thief’s hand was fisted around his cock, the tip visibly glistening with precome.

 **Steve:** Christ I’m so hard just looking at you

 **Phone Thief:** you gonna touch yourself for me stevie?

Steve pulled his shirt off and scrambled to unzip his trousers and liberate his straining erection. He lay back on his bed, half-propped on the pile of pillows, and finally touched himself. He looked again at that last picture, imagined it was Phone Thief’s hand wrapped tight around his shaft, letting Steve fuck up into his grip. Would Phone Thief want to straddle his hips, grind their dicks together? Or would he be too impatient for that, go straight for riding Steve like a pony, all those muscles flexing as he bounced on Steve’s cock…

His core tensed and he came in a white hot flash of pleasure, shooting all over his stomach and up his chest. He gasped for breath, dazed; the relief was like floating in a sun-warmed pool. It took him a minute to remember that he hadn’t replied, and he checked his phone again.

 **Phone Thief:** so… that do it for you?

There was an undertone of uncertainty in the words that plucked at Steve’s heart. They had both survived deep, permanent changes. Maybe Phone Thief needed an outlet to help him come to terms with his new body; it wasn’t precisely the same, but Steve sure could understand that need. Either way, he couldn’t let the self-doubt stand. Phone Thief was smoking hot and he deserved to know exactly how affected Steve was.

 **Steve:** yeah, doll, I’d say you do it for me

Then he sent a photo of the state he was in—face carefully framed out, but dick carefully framed in, come glistening all the way up to his sternum.

 **Phone Thief:** fuck ur so gorgeous im gonna frame that and hang it on my wall

 **Phone Thief:** this was supposed to be your present and now im the one gagging for it

Steve felt like he was going mad. This was _insane,_ they weren’t even in the same room—but maybe that was the point. The anonymity meant there was no need to act proper, to second-guess his desires. No reason to hold back.

 **Steve:** I want you to jack off while you’re looking at me.

 **Phone Thief:** mission accepted

Steve pinched his lower lip between his teeth, thinking about how Phone Thief’s biceps would flex in motion. Was he taking it slow, teasing himself, or was he so riled up by the sight of Steve’s come-splattered torso that he was frantically beating off? Steve’s cock rallied back to full mast and he went a second round before checking his phone again.

 **Steve:** Mission report, soldier.

No response. The seconds ticked by and Steve started to get nervous. Had he pushed this too far somehow?

 **Phone Thief:** give a guy a sec to wipe the spunk off his hand jeez

Steve laughed, relieved and riding a giddy sort of post-orgasm high.

 **Steve:** God, I needed that.

 **Phone Thief:** you gonna thank me for my service? ;)

 **Steve:** I feel like that turned into a team effort

 **Phone Thief:** fair enough

There was a pause while Phone Thief typed something longer, but Steve’s anxiety from a minute ago seemed to have leveled out. This thing was weird and unexpected, but as unconventional as it might be, he felt like he’d made a connection with someone.

 **Phone Thief:** so not to shut the barn door after the horses ran out or anything but i feel like i should double check that you are not in fact sams boyfriend. my gaydar is usually pretty solid, but sexting my therapist’s beau would be a new low for me

 **Steve:** Don’t worry, you’re all clear. Sam is very straight.

Steve chewed the inside of his cheek, but made himself type out the next line before he lost his nerve.

 **Steve:** and I am very single

The ellipsis blinked at him mockingly. He waited, staring at the screen with bated breath.

 **Phone Thief:** my name is bucky


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the enthusiastic comments! By popular demand, here’s some more of Bucky and Steve being hot messes. This is going to grow a little bit of plot as scaffolding to hold up all the angst and smut and fluff.
> 
> In case anyone is a timeline nerd, this would be happening in autumn of 2013, assuming Sam and Steve become friends much earlier before the implosion of SHIELD.

Bucky had more or less come to terms with the fact that physical therapy was going to be a permanent fixture of his life now. He was dependent on his right arm for everything and hardly using the left side of his body at all—unbalanced muscle tone would be a ticket to eventual back problems, and it wasn’t like Bucky could just do push-ups with his stump. Hence the continued input from a physical therapist. (Also, TheraBands. So many TheraBands.)

But he had another twenty minutes until his appointment, so he was killing time getting coffee across the street from the PT office. He took out his phone, set it on the café table, and just sort of stared at it mournfully while he drank his latte. It had been just about half a year since he got out of the hospital, but he still sometimes found it intensely irritating that he was hindered from multitasking like a true millennial should. He was bored and wanted to be entertained. He set down his coffee and opened the text chain with Hot Steve.

 **Bucky:** hey

Bucky immediately regretted it. Steve would probably assume he was trying to initiate another sexting session. He’d either be annoyed, since it was the middle of a workday, or he’d be down for it and disappointed, since Bucky was not actually interested in jerking off in the bathroom of a Starbucks. His phone pinged.

 **Hot Steve:** Hey, what’s up?

 **Bucky:** just killing time before a pt appt

 **Hot Steve:** Today’s a paperwork day for me. Immediate exfil desperately requested.

Bucky grinned. That sounded like Steve was somehow, miraculously, interested in chatting with him about something other than their respective dicks.

 **Bucky:** so you air force?

 **Hot Steve:** Bite your tongue

 **Hot Steve:** I was Army for a couple years, then I made a sort of lateral move into intelligence.

 **Bucky:** sorry jeez i just assumed you knew sam from the service

 **Hot Steve:** I met Sam jogging around the Mall, actually. Apparently I looked like the saddest golden retriever at the pound and he decided to adopt me.

 **Bucky:** hah sounds like sam

They texted back and forth for the whole twenty minutes while his half-drunk overpriced latte went cold. Bucky told Steve a little about his own time in the army, his training as a Special Forces sniper. They both carefully avoided digging for details about Steve’s current job (probably classified) or how Bucky ended up with three limbs and an honorable discharge (definitely traumatic).

As he hurried across the street, now almost in danger of being late, Bucky felt an odd sort of warmth in his chest. He felt… happy. He liked chatting with Hot Steve. Shit. What was he doing? WHAT WAS HE DOING. Bucky couldn’t develop actual feels for Hot Steve. The whole point of Hot Steve was to have a semi-anonymous sex buddy who made Bucky feel good about himself with zero risk involved. This was all going to end in disaster.

.o.O.o.

Steve sprinted through the first ten miles or so of his morning run and then slowed to fall in beside Sam, jogging breezily along while Sam's lungs heaved and he soaked through his sweatshirt. Steve just grinned his _I’m secretly a little shit_ grin, as Sam liked to call it.

“What are you so chipper about this morning?” Sam panted. “You got this whole overexcited puppy vibe goin’, on top of the super-soldier morning person thing. It’s a gross wealth of energy, man. Unfair. What’s up with you?”

“Um,” Steve said, his gaze shifting away guiltily.

It had been two days since the phone theft incident and Sam hadn’t said anything to him about it yet, so Steve had no choice but to conclude that he didn’t know, and Steve felt strangely reluctant to bring it up. He didn’t want to rat out Bucky to someone who was, however tenuously, in a position of authority over him. But withholding it from Sam, while not precisely lying, did feel uncomfortably lying-adjacent.

“Why you gettin’ all shifty?”

“I’m not shifty,” Steve protested too quickly.

“Uh-huh,” Sam drawled, clearly buying zero percent of Steve’s bullshit.

“It’s just… I’ve been out of the ice for a year and a half, and I’m _still_ finding new and exciting hurdles to trip over. They gave me five books on the Vietnam War, but nobody explained the etiquette for how to text with strangers.”

“Wait, stop,” Sam said, slowing to a halt and taking a seat in the grass to stretch instead. “Sounds like I’m gonna need my whole lung capacity available, in case I need to smack some sense into you.”

Steve dropped down next to him. “I mean, if you’re gonna _smack_ me, what do you need your lungs for?”

Sam smacked him lightly on the back of the head, demonstrating. “So I can yell at you at the same time, dude!” They both dissolved into undignified snickering for a few seconds before Sam sobered again. “Okay, I’m ready. Lay it on me.”

“So I’ve been texting with this guy.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And we sort of…” Steve felt his face heat, and had to remind himself that this was the twenty-first century and people talked about this sort of thing now. “…had phone sex.”

“Uh-huh.”

Steve frowned thoughtfully. “Wait. Did you know I’m gay?”

“Well you just told me, so I do now,” Sam said casually. “Back to phone-friend: so what’s the problem?”

“I mean, it was… and I’d really like to… again. But I also don’t want him to think that I’m just interested in that, or come off as too clingy, or—ugh.” Steve dropped his face into his hands.

“Okaaay,” Sam said. “I kinda feel like a fourteen-year-old girl right now, but I’m gonna roll with it. Has he texted you again?”

What followed was a surprisingly in-depth crash course in the social mores of internet dating and hookups, because Sam’s superpower was the ability to talk about _anything_ without making it weird. Steve hoped Sam didn’t mind too much—he was very aware that no one had provided _Sam_ with an instructional booklet entitled “So Your New Best Friend Is A Defrosted Superhero.” That really seemed like an oversight.

.o.O.o.

Bucky startled awake in the dark, an amorphous nightmare-version of the walls and streets of Kandahar still shifting behind his eyelids, his pulse hammering in his throat. For a second, instinct had him reaching under his pillow for a tactical knife that wasn’t there, before he heard the telltale drag-thump, drag-thump of Jamie scooting down the stairs on his butt. (The basement stairs were carpeted, but they were still a bit steep for a four-year-old to navigate alone in the dark.)

“Bubba?” Jamie called out in a not-quite-successful approximation of a stage whisper, hovering in the open doorway of the basement bedroom.

Bucky rubbed his eyes and dragged himself up into a sitting position so he could click on the bedside lamp. “Hey champ, what you doing up? Bad dream?”

“Yeah,” the boy admitted.

Bucky patted the bed and Jamie climbed up next to him. “Yeah, me too. Wanna tell me about yours?”

Jamie shook his head. He usually didn’t. According to Becca, the frequent nightmares were a recent development, and Bucky couldn’t help but wonder if the ex-husband, John, had a featured role in them.

“Bedtime story?” Bucky offered instead.

He had a stash of picture books on his nightstand for just such an occasion. They made it through _Where the Wild Things Are_ and half of _Owl Moon_ before Jamie conked out, using Bucky’s thigh as a pillow.

He was considering whether he should try to maneuver them both into a more comfortable position when his phone screen lit up silently with an incoming text. He grabbed the phone, charger cord thankfully long enough that he didn’t need to bother unplugging. It was almost midnight, but he opened the message thread anyway.

 **Hot Steve:** Hey, you awake?

 **Bucky:** awake yes, available for sexytimes no

 **Hot Steve:** oh okay

Something about those words made Bucky concerned that he’d inadvertently cause Hot Steve to make Sad Golden Retriever Face.

 **Bucky:** not bc of you. ive been conscripted as a pillow for a 4 year old

 **Hot Steve:** Oh! Swell. I didn’t know you had kids.

Bucky didn’t think there was any undertone of passive-aggressive accusation or disappointment there, which was nice. But then again: who says _swell_?

 **Bucky:** i have a nephew, but im daytime caregiver so sort of yes

Somehow, from there, they started texting about family. Apparently Hot Steve was an only child and had lost both his parents already, and the thought made Bucky _ache_. It occurred to him that in addition to needing help with a problematic libido, Steve seemed just plain lonely. Bucky was struck with a sudden twinge of worry that he really didn’t know what he was getting himself into, here.

.o.O.o.

Bucky and Jamie emerged from the basement in the morning, both a little bleary-eyed, to the smell of freshly-brewed coffee and eggs cooking on the stove.

“Hey, there’s my boys,” Becca said, glancing up from cooking. She was dressed in jeans and a plaid button-up, because apparently the work wardrobe of an assistant curator needed to say, _I might at any second grab a rock hammer and go hunting for fossils_ , even when she was definitely going to be stuck in Collections all day.

Bucky grunted something that might generously be interpreted as a greeting and hefted the equally sleepy Jamie into his booster seat at the kitchen table. (Moving to DC had come with a whole new exciting set of occupational therapy challenges, but Bucky was gradually mastering the one-armed childcare thing.) He grabbed a mug from the cupboard, smoothly navigating past Becca in the kitchen, and poured himself coffee before turning back to Jamie.

“Juice?”

“Juice,” Jamie confirmed. One of the great things about preschoolers is they never judge you for grunting in monosyllables.

Bucky poured a cup of organic orange-mango stuff—cuz Becca was fancy like that—and then fished in the drawer for forks while Becca portioned out the scrambled eggs onto plates. They moved around each other in the only modestly-sized cooking area with the choreographed ease of an old married couple, and Bucky was vaguely aware that other people would think this was weird. But Bucky and Becca were the kind of twins who’d been ride-or-die for each other since birth, and losing an arm and a husband respectively had only made them close ranks.

As they sat down to eat, Becca said, “Forgot to tell you Mom called me yesterday. While I was at work, no less.”

“Mm,” Bucky nodded. “Interview the subjects separately. Classic interrogation technique.”

Becca shot him a dry look from across the table. “Maybe if you’d tell her more than ‘I’m fine’ and ‘don’t worry’, she wouldn’t be pumping me for details.”

“Well I _am_ fine, and she worries too much,” Bucky grumped. “What, does she want to review my weekly appointment schedule?”

Becca snorted. “Probably.” Then she added to Jamie, “Your gramma is a certified worrywort.”

Bucky scowled down at his eggs and breakfast potatoes. Hot Steve said his mother died when he was eighteen. Did that mean there was no one in his life who worried about Hot Steve? He was texting about his awkward, very private medical side-effects with his _running buddy_. Was Steve really that alone?

.o.O.o.

The conversation from the night before stayed with Steve all day while he ran training exercises in the gym level of the Triskelion. Bucky was becoming a real person to him, instead of just a sexy klepto with possible impulse control issues. Sure, Steve still wanted to lick the hollow vee of his hip. But he also wanted to… be his friend?

Steve didn’t have that many actual friends. Shosh was great, but it was literally her job to spend time with him. Nat was by turns familiar and inscrutable, had no sense of personal boundaries, and he was never totally sure where he stood with her. Clint was easy-going but quirky in a way that sometimes veered toward mentally unstable, which Steve did not feel equipped to handle. Steve had tried going out for beers with Rumlow and the STRIKE team boys, but, as Shoshanna would say, _hard pass._ With a little alcohol to grease the wheels, they were exactly the sort of misogynistic, homophobic dickwads Steve had suspected they might be, and they seemed weirdly invested in trying to drag him down to their level.

Sam, at least, was a friend he’d made entirely on his own with no connection to SHIELD, but even there, Steve sometimes worried about leaning too hard on him for emotional support and crossing a professional boundary. Sam was a counselor, but he wasn’t _Steve’s_ counselor. (Steve didn’t have a therapist. Half the stuff he’d want to talk about was classified, and the SHIELD therapists only cared about whether he was fit for duty. Sam had argued strongly that this was an unsustainable situation, and while Steve didn’t disagree, he also didn’t see a solution.)

Steve’s ruminations were derailed when they had to suddenly mobilize to Baltimore to fight some sort of mutant kraken thing waving its massive tentacles around the inner harbor. By the time they returned to the Triskelion, it was past 8pm—on a Friday, no less—and he put his foot down and insisted the debriefing could wait until Monday. He was painfully hard inside the carbon-fiber armoring of his tac suit, and he was not going to make Shoshanna come in to work at 8pm on a Friday just to provide him with a protein shake and a pep talk. Enough was enough. Sitwell could drone on about minimizing property damage next week.

Steve didn’t even bother stopping by the locker rooms to change, just went straight from the quinjet hangar to the employee garage. On the ride home, the motorcycle vibrating between his thighs did not help with the critical situation in his pants at all.

Steve banged clumsily through his apartment door and started peeling the suit off as he made his way to the bedroom. With the top part hanging off like a half-dressed surfer, Steve thumbed frantically at his phone.

 **Steve:** Please tell me you’re not on kid duty tonight.

 **Phone Thief:** im alone with a bedroom door that locks

 **Phone Thief:** got yourself all riled up baby?

 **Steve:** I’m so hard I might pass out from low blood flow to everything above the waist

 **Phone Thief:** show me

Steve peeled off the rest of the suit and rushed into the en suite bathroom to use the mirror. He whimpered when he touched himself, the shaft hot in his palm. Making a ring with his finger and thumb, he pulled his foreskin down further, showing off the flushed head of his dick. Snapping a photo in the mirror seemed to electrify the touch; just knowing that someone else was going to experience this with him made his own hand feel more intensely erotic. He sent the picture to Bucky.

 **Phone Thief:** oof. want me to take care of you?

 **Steve:** You have no idea how much.

There was a pause, the ellipsis taunting him for a few seconds before Bucky replied.

 **Phone Thief:** would you be down with switching to a voice call?

Logically, Steve knew that Bucky was probably asking for logistical reasons—simultaneous texting and jerking off was difficult enough with two hands—but all Steve’s lizard brain cared about was _hearing his voice_. God, he wanted to have Bucky’s voice in his ear while he touched himself. Yes. Yes, please. Steve tapped the phone icon, and Bucky answered after only a single ring.

“Hey there.” Bucky voice was low and smooth with a hint of knowing smirk, and Steve had to bite down on a whimper.

“Hi.” Steve suddenly didn’t know what to say. His higher brain functions were not exactly cranking at their usual speed.

“You gonna get all sprawled out with me on the bed?”

“Oh, fuck. Yeah.” The mental image of a naked Bucky lounging atop the bed covers was very… _hnf_. Steve jumped onto his bed and touched himself lightly, the anticipation like a fire lit under his skin.

“Gimme a sec,” Bucky said, followed by a muted shuffling. “A’right, mission ready on my end.”

Something about the sound quality had changed, and Steve was puzzled for a second before he realized that Bucky must have put him on speakerphone. “Get your hand on your dick, soldier.”

“Copy that, _sir_ ,” Bucky said emphatically, and _oh_ that went straight to his cock in a way Steve very much did not expect. Huh. Almost conversationally, Bucky added, “Is it bad that I was already getting half hard even before the photo came through? You’re so fuckin’ hot, just thinking about you gets me going.”

“Tell me what you like,” Steve babbled, his brain-to-mouth filter seemingly vanished. “If you were here, how would we fuck?”

“Usually people look at my build and assume I’m gonna top…” His voice trailed off, as if there was an unspoken _but_ at the end of that sentence.

“Yeah?” Steve said slowly, grinning. “If you want someone to toss you around a bit, that can be arranged.”

“I, uh… that could be interesting.” Bucky sounded a little breathless at the proposition.

“I’m pretty strong. Ever had someone pick you up and fuck you against a wall?” Steve’s cock was leaking precome, lost to the fantasy of burying himself balls deep in Bucky. “Maybe toss you on the mattress so hard you bounce. Pin your hand over your head, and—”

“ _What_.” Bucky interrupted, tone icy.

“Huh?” Steve’s hand stilled as he played back what he’d just said in his mind, trying to figure out what he’d done wrong.

“You said ‘hand,’ singular.”

“Um.” Steve swallowed. “Was I not supposed to know that? You kind of implied it. Pretty strongly.”

He could hear Bucky taking a deep breath and letting it out. “No, it’s fine. I don’t know why I’m being touchy when I was the asshole joking about dick amputation. Sorry.”

Steve’s voice went soft. “You’re allowed to feel however you feel about it, Buck.”

There was a long pause. When Bucky spoke again, his voice was strange and tight. “Can we get back to the part where you’re gonna bend me in half and ruin me?”

“Hm,” Steve answered, tactical mind turning over his options. “See, now I feel like a bit of a cad, not being more careful with you. Think I might have to wrap my lips around you and suck you off, nice and slow.”

Bucky let out a small, wrecked moan. “You a bit of a tease, Stevie? Gotta warn you I can get competitive about that. Might have to roll you over and prep you real slow, finger you open until you’re sobbing and begging for it.” He paused. “You got lube?”

“Yeah, one sec.” Steve scrambled for the bedside drawer and smear lube on his fingers, then shifted his hips to get his hand behind himself. His voice came out strained when he said, “You gonna touch me, Buck?”

“I’m gonna rub one fingertip around your rim, real gentle, not pushing inside.”

Steve touch himself just the way Bucky described and let out a desperate little moan. “You understand I’m literally going to die at this rate. I’m a war hero, Bucky, you don’t want that on your conscience, do you?”

Bucky let out a surprised bark of laughter. “All right, but take it easy. I’m gonna fuck you with just one finger, steady in and out, until you’re all loose and desperate for more.”

Steve followed his instructions, gasping into the phone. It had been a while since he’d done anything like this, and he was sensitive enough that even a single finger felt amazing. “I’m really tight,” he reported breathlessly.

“Oh honey, I want to work you open so good. You ready for a second finger?”

Steve bit his lower lip. “Uh-huh.”

“Go ahead, baby.”

The stretch was so good; he’d forgotten how much he loved the feeling of intrusion, lighting up all those nerves inside him. “Please, please,” he muttered nonsensically, with no clear notion what he was even asking for, except for _Bucky,_ and _more._

Bucky’s breathing was turning short and quick. “Fuck, what I wouldn’t give to be balls deep in your ass right now, rocking in and out just a little while you beg so sweet like that.”

Steve felt wrecked, pumping his hand over his throbbing cock while imagining that it was Bucky plowing his ass. Through the phone, he could hear the wet rhythmic slap and choked off moans of Bucky chasing closer to the edge.

Steve’s balls tightened up toward his body. “Oh god, I’m gonna come!” The wave crested and crashed, his muscles clenching rhythmically around his fingers, his cock geysering in his other hand. At the other end of the line, Bucky made a punched-out groan, following right behind him.

Steve lay still for a minute, sticky and sated, listening to the sound of Bucky’s breaths through the phone. And if some part of him was still wishing for Bucky to be there, so they could curl up in a sweaty tangle of sheets and fall asleep in each other’s arms… well, no one needed to know that.


End file.
